The present invention relates, in general, to the coloring and flavoring of food products, and more particularly, relates to the coloring and flavoring of olives.
There are a wide range of commercially available olive products, but the market clearly is dominated by green olives and black olives. In the European market, green olives tend to be commercially more successful than black olives. Green olives tend to be more bitter or astringent and have more complex flavoring. In the United States market, black olives dominate the market and their flavor is less intense and bitter.
In recent years, the popularity of Kalamata olives has increased substantially. These olives are burgundy in color and tend to be somewhere between green olives and black olives in the complexity of their flavor and bitterness. The production of Kalamata olives, and other varieties which have approximately the same appearance and flavor tends to be very time-consuming and expensive. Often, such olives are produced by a fermentation process in a brine solution which requires months before the desired appearance and flavor is achieved. Classic Kalamata olives are, however, often more astringent than much of the U.S. market appreciates. Thus, the flavor of Kalamata olives can be too intense for many United States consumers, who are more used to black olive products.
Attempts have been made to both color and flavor food products in general and olives in particular. The patent literature, for example, includes patents on fermenting cucumbers and brine to pickle the cucumbers, as, for example, is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,403,032. Flavoring of olive stuffing, such as pimento, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,382,682 and 2,436,463.
In connection with olives, the patent art includes processes such as are set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,171,586 and 5,094,871 for de-bittering or cutting olive pulp to produce a black ripe olive product or a Spanish-type olive product.
Various methods for producing black olives using caustic solutions to cut the bitterness of the green olives also are well known in the art and are typified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,463,023 and 4,664,926. An alternative method of producing black olives is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,837,304.
Coloring of green olives using erythrosine or Red Dye No. 3 is also known in the prior art. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,620,726, green olives are bleached using either a sulfurous anhydride, alkaline sulfite or citric acid solution and then the bleached olives are immersed in a boiling aqueous erythrosine solution to produce an olive having a tomato-red or strawberry red color.
Flavoring of olives is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,852,941, 3,480,448 and 3,975,270. In the first of these patents flavor is imparted by packing them in a brine having a flavoring edible oil. In the second patent, U.S. Pat. No. 3,480,448 a brine-curing process is employed in which the olives are fermented in a brine solution. Such fermentation is widely used in the industry in connection with Spanish, Sicilian and Kalamata olives. Finally, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,975,270, the reconstitution of waste brine solution from an olive processing system is taught so that the olive-processing liquor can be recycled for subsequent fermentation cycles.
While these prior art processes are capable of both coloring and flavoring olives, the coloring and flavoring effects are often not particularly commercially desirable, or require complex and expensive equipment, or require an undesirably long processing time.
Accordingly, it is an object of the process and product of the present invention to produce a burgundy colored olive which also has complex fermentation-based flavors and to achieve this result using a process which takes days, instead of months, to complete.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a process for producing burgundy colored olives in which the colorant is stable and remains substantially fixed in the flesh of the olive for long periods of time.
Another object of the present invention is to produce a burgundy colored olive in which the flavoring of the olive can be tailored to the tastes of various consumers, ranging from a near-black olive flavor to a complex, very spicy Kalamata/Sicilian/Spanish olive fermentation flavor.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a process and product for forming flavored burgundy colored olives which can be implemented at a relatively low cost using conventional olive processing apparatus.
The olive coloring and flavoring processes of the present invention, and resulting olives, have other objects and features of advantage which will become apparent from, or are set forth in more detail in, the accompanying drawing and the following description of the Best Mode Of Carrying Out The Invention.
In one aspect of the present invention, a process for producing burgundy colored olives is provided and includes the steps, briefly, of darkening the color of the green olives, preferably using a caustic de-bittering or cutting solution and exposing them to air to darken them. Thereafter the process includes the steps of, substantially neutralizing the pH of the olives, while neutralized, soaking the olives in an aqueous solution of a food grade red dye, such as, Red Dye No. 3, at ambient temperatures for a period of at least 12 hours, and packing the olives in an acidic solution to fix the colorant in the olive flesh during storage. The packing solution is preferably acidic brine solution which includes a mother brine recovered as a by-product of an olive fermentation process.
In the other aspect of the present invention a process for producing complexly flavored olives is provided which comprises, briefly, the steps of processing the olives for packing, and thereafter, packing the olives in a container in a brine solution including a mother brine from an olive fermentation process present in an amount ranging between about 1 to about 20 percent by weight. Most preferably, the mother brine also has a salt level less than about 30 degrees, as measured by a Salometer, and the process includes the step of adding a saturated salt solution to the mother brine solution in an amount between about 6 to about 20 percent by volume. The flavoring process also includes the step of adding emulsifying agent to the brine solution in an amount effective to suspend flavorants in the brine solution and to prevent separation thereof.